


Scientific Curiosity

by dragonlisette



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, M/M, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-03 21:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11540949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonlisette/pseuds/dragonlisette
Summary: "saw their number graffitied on a toilet stall au"





	Scientific Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

> [originally posted on tumblr.](http://cityofphanchester.tumblr.com/post/93741578555/scientific-curiosity)

Phil’s never really had friends. He had playmates in primary school, all scraped knees and sticky fingers and rosy smiles, and even now, a few of those people offer him invitations and numbers in his mobile, just because he’s familiar. It’s the thing about small towns. You know things about people whether you intend to or not. He doesn’t mind it, not exactly. It’s a web of tenuous links and half-forgotten histories and there’s an unspoken sort of bond. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Everyone knows everything.

But those sorts of fragile connections don’t make friendships, and Phil’s had worse friends than the patch of wall he’s currently leaning against. It’s a faded, peeling sort of white, and it’s at the back of the boys’ toilet in the music hallway, and he’s been spending his lunch hour here for the better part of a year. At first it bothered him, but he minds less and less. He’s grown to appreciate the quiet, the peace. There’s the steady drip of the broken tap and the piping voices from the choir room a few doors down. Sometimes the rustling pages of his textbooks if he forgot a piece of homework the night before. Mostly just the quiet, and his thoughts, his head leant back against the cool wall, legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, his breathing soft and paced. He’s memorized all the colors and textures, all the lights and shadows.

He notices the difference in the room, the large, messy scrawl of black Sharpie across the door of the last cubicle, almost immediately. It’s a string of numbers, underlined, the sevens crossed with a horizontal bar and the twos looped. It’s not the only writing in the room. There are other signatures, other numbers, some My Chemical Romance lyrics crammed in a corner, but they’re all old and faded like the paint on the walls. The people who’d scribbled them there, hoping to sign themselves onto the time and the place, to claim their significance, to scream that they’d been there, that they’d mattered, those people are long gone. They were wrong. No one cared about their names anymore. The faded ink is meaningless. But this ink is fresh, and Phil is intrigued. He stands up, reaches out to touch it, as if it will open a portal into another world filled with wonder.

His fingertips brush the writing, and nothing happens. The cubicle door swings back a bit at his touch, and he feels stupid, and he slides back down the wall and stretches his legs out again, waiting for the far-off bell. He’s always been good at waiting. It’s so easy for him to cut the tether between reality and his mind, to drift off into free-floating daydream, but today, of course, the only thing in his head is the scrawl of numbers with the crossed sevens and the looped twos. He stands up again and watches the writing, as if it’s going to scurry off and hide. He can’t think why someone would put their number there. Phil doesn’t willingly give his mobile number to people he talks to on a regular basis, let alone acquaintances, let alone any stranger in the music hallway toilet, and he wants to know why someone would. It’s a mystery to him, and once that word, mystery, is in his head, he’s fishing his phone out of the front pocket of his bag. It’s a mystery, and he’s going to solve it.

Of course, once his phone is unlocked and in his hand, he huffs a reluctant breath and goes to turn it off again. He can’t remember doing a single reckless thing in his life, and besides, he can’t carry on a conversation with his mother; why does he want to start one with a stranger?  _You won’t be able to do it_ , his brain tells him aggressively,  _you won’t be able to do it_ , so he adds the number to his contacts under the name  _mystery_  and opens a new text message.

**12:35** _Hi._

send.

There’s an answer almost immediately, and Phil’s heart is pounding through his ribs and he sits down again.

**12:35** _Who is this?_

Phil laughs, because he could be the Queen and Mystery wouldn’t know. After some deliberation, he sends

**12:36** _If you leave your number in a public place, someone might contact it._

He doesn’t want to sound like a serial killer. He just wants to know why someone would write their number on a wall.

**12:36**   _Apparently._

Phil doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t, and Mystery doesn’t reply either, and Phil puts his phone away and decides to let it be.

Ten o’clock at night and halfway into a history essay, his phone buzzes. He’s sprawled out across his bed staring sleepily at his laptop screen because he doesn’t care about the topic and the little metallic whine is a welcome distraction. He’s expecting it to be someone asking about an assignment they don’t remember the details of, and he’ll tell them, and then he’ll have to go back to hitting return, delete, return, delete, return, delete in lieu of actually writing anything. He’s wrong.

**22:07** _okay, so we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. u clearly go to the same school as me, so I’m not gonna ask u your name, but can I call you smth other than ‘the toilet stalker’?_

Phil thinks, and his pulse is racing.

**22:08** _Um. Queen Elizabeth?_

**22:08** _what’s the queen doing in the gentlemen’s room_

**22:08** _How about prince william, then?_

**22:09** _u clearly have suppressed issues with wanting to be royalty, your royal highness. can I be james bond?_

**22:09** _yes._

**22:10** _okay, prince william, why’d you text the number written in the least-visited toilet in the entire school._

**22:10** _Honestly? because I was curious as to why someone would write it there. You seem to be the obvious choice to ask. Why?_

There’s a long pause, so long that Phil sets his phone down and glances back at his laptop, working out another waffly sentence he can add to the end of the waffly paragraph. He’s banged out some more useless facts when his phone vibrates, muffled slightly by the duvet.

**22:16** _idk. Actually I do know why I did it but I don’t know you so_

Phil formulates a couple of responses he could give to that, but nothing really works and it’s easier to not reply at all. It’s too hard to carry on a conversation with nothing to go on. Probably his pseudo-acquaintance with Mystery ends now. He goes to push the phone away, but it buzzes in his hand.

**22:19** _still there?_

He’s startled.

**22:20** _yes_

**22:20** _good_

The conversation’s in a natural lull, but Phil doesn’t want to stop talking. He doesn’t know anything about this stranger, and there’s no physical space around them to comment on, and so he goes for the first thing to come into his head.

**22:21** _What’s your favorite color?_

**22:21** _black. bc I’m super hardcore, obviously. you?_

**22:22** _….blue because I’m not super hardcore._

**22:23** _ahaha you sent that at 22:22 make a wish_

Phil laughs into his hand because he likes this person, and he doubts that Super Hardcore people make wishes when numbers line up. So he asks another random question, and it’s followed with another and another, and they like some of the same TV shows and movies and most of the same bands, and when Phil unwillingly confesses to having a semi-embarrassing YouTube channel with a couple of thousand subscribers, Mystery admits that he struggles through painfully slow internet speeds to watch webcam vloggers and update a mortifying MySpace account. Finally Phil registers what time it is, and sends a message before he can really think about what it says.

**23:47** _it’s almost midnight & I have a history essay to write but I don’t wanna stop talking to you can we be friends?_

send.

**23:48** _yes, prince william, you are my friend. I like you. I am now friends with royalty._

**23:48** _good._

**23:49** _yeah._

**23:49** _okay. really need to go. I’d like to sleep tonight. history is calling._

**23:50** _wait, don’t go if you stay ten more minutes it’ll be midnight._

So Phil stays ten more minutes, and then he stays ten more minutes after that, and by then they’ve started another conversation, and it’s quarter to one when they finally say goodnight.

**00:42** _it’s not goodnight, prince william, it’s good morning._

**00:42** _good morning, then, mystery stranger._

**00:43** _IT’S NOT MYSTERY STRANGER IT’S JAMES BOND_

**00:44** _right, sorry, I forgot GOOD MORNING JAMES BOND x]_

**00:45** _good morning, prince william :D_

And Phil doesn’t finish writing his history essay, but he doesn’t particularly care because he’s too tired and happy to care about anything, and all he can feel is a sort of vague happiness that he texted that number twelve hours before.

 

“Morning.”

Phil looks up from the French notes he’s taking to see Veronica Casey leaning on his desk, which is odd, because she’s the most popular girl in school and they’ve never had much more than a sort of casual disdain for each other.

“Morning?” he says, shaking his messy fringe out of his eyes to look at her because it’s Friday and he couldn’t be bothered to fix his hair properly. She, on the other hand, looks pristine, like she’s been sculpted, every wave of dark hair lying carefully in place, her weather-inappropriate vest top hanging off her shoulders like a Greek goddess’s chiton.

“It’s my birthday.” she says coolly.

“Happy birthday.” he tells her.

“Yeah.” she says, unimpressed. “I’m having a party at the abandoned hospital tonight at ten. I’m inviting everyone. So come.” She puts a tiny shred of emphasis on everyone, enough to let him know he’s only being invited to pad the guest list, but not enough to be impolite.

“Okay.” he says. He doesn’t want to go, but he knows he will and he’s not sure why some bizarre masochistic tendency of his makes him go to parties when he doesn’t even go to lunch.

A shrill voice calls out for  _Mademoiselle Veronique_ , and Veronica’s stalking away. “C’est mon anniversaire,” she tells Madame when she reaches her seat, like Madame cares. When she receives no response, she takes a seat on the left edge of her chair, leaning toward Dan Howell in the seat next to her as if she’s magnetically attracted to him. She flirts with Howell constantly, and it’s one of the many reasons Phil holds a casual disdain towards her, because she’s clearly deluding herself. Dan Howell’s a vindictive heartbreaker who acquires girls at parties and never gives a passing glance to them afterward. Besides, Veronica already has a soft-hearted, albeit dim-witted, midfielder boyfriend who drapes his jacket around her shoulders on cold days and gazes at her with puppylike eyes. And yet, there she is, staring at Howell’s languid posture and giggling behind her hand at the uninspired comments he makes.

 

The abandoned hospital is several miles out into the country, and it’s a landmark. It could be a romantic old ruin, full of adventure and mystique and history, but it’s not. It’s just a building, a gaping, cavernous shell, half-collapsed in the back, most of the floorboards rotted through. Everyone guesses it was a war hospital, cleared out and locked up in the forties or fifties, but no one cares enough to find out. It’s just a place for drunken exploration or trysts or parties that would otherwise bring police.

There are about seventy people packed into the lobby now. It’s the only room most people see, because the stairs off the lobby are crumbling and the ground floor hallways are too eerie for most tastes. Phil’s been back there, several times. It’s dark and creaky and broken glass scatters the floor, and it’s not bad, but it’s not very pretty. He likes the lobby. The ceiling is high and tangled in cobwebs, and the room is rough and splintery and unforgiving and yet bathed in cool, gentle moonlight. There’s no difference tonight, because Veronica hasn’t invested in much decoration. There’s a few strings of fairy lights tacked up to add festivity, but mostly the room’s just a receptacle to hold the people and the warm beer and the several crackly speakers currently blaring top-of-the-charts garbage at top volume.

Phil has seated himself in a windowsill, ducking his head because pieces of jagged glass protrude from the top pane. He hasn’t talked to anyone here yet, and he doesn’t plan on it. He’s going to sit here for a while, and then he’s probably going to leave. He hasn’t worked out yet why he came, but he’s enjoying himself. On his left, out the empty windowframe, he can see the brightening stars, and on his right there’s a crowd of teenagers gradually becoming tipsy and then drunk as rap echoes along the floorboards. He watches both, and he thinks.

His phone buzzes, and he takes it out automatically. It’s either Mystery or his mum; either way, he’s going to look at it.

**22:51** _hey are u there can I talk to you_

It’s Mystery.

**22:51** _yes and yes_

**22:52** _heyy ok this is kinda weird im sorry its just im at a party and it’s too loud and id like to talk to someone who isn’t drunk._

There’s a pause, and another message follows before Phil can answer. 

_sry im probably drunk just a warning_

So Mystery is here. Phil’s not really surprised. Most people are here. Veronica invited a lot of people, and there are people showing up that probably weren’t invited. He stares out into the crowd, hoping to see a face lit up by their mobile’s light, hoping to maybe put a name and a face to the person, but there are too many people texting latecomers and taking delirious pictures to post to DailyBooth later.

**22:53** _okay. hi there, james bond._

**22:53** _hi, prince william. how are you?_

**22:54** _im good. how are you?_

Phil smiles slightly as he waits for the answer. The stiltedness is pleasant instead of awkward.

**22:56** _I’m good. listen, can, like, you don’t have to give me your real name, but can I call you something better than prince william. I don’t want, like, you might be my best friend and I want a real name but I don’t want to make you tell me who you are and yeah_

It takes Phil less than a second to think of something.

**22:57** _My middle name is Michael you can call me Michael._

**22:57** _Okay hi Michael thank you my middle name is James btw so it’s like james bond except not the bond part_

**22:58** _hi James. I think you might be my best friend too, by the way, so I agree james is better than james bond._

**23:00** _okay good okay. I would really like someone to talk to because I don’t like alcohol that much but my friends keep giving me beer and I’m really dizzy bc I don’t handle it that well and I just kissed some girl even though I didn’t want to and she’s so sure something’s gonna come of it but I can’t do that_

Phil’s formulating a response that’s probably unhelpful stereotypical advice, but another message comes before he can send it.

_sorry oh my god im gonna regret telling you this later but I don’t want to regret it im sorry I think im drunker than I think I am_

And Phil deletes what he was going to say and thinks of something else, staring off across the dewy forest, the rusty hospital gates, the tangled clouds and the scattered stars.

**23:02** _It’s fine, I promise. You don’t even know me. You can tell me whatever you want, I promise I’m listening._

And so the scattered fragments of text hiding under a false name tell a mess of a story. The words don’t mean much of anything, except that James is scared and trapped, and he can’t get out, and he would have nowhere to go even if he could, and it’s disjointed pleas on one side and disjointed assurances on the other, and it’s four in the morning before the messages stop with a small, tired  _thank you good night._

 

Phil wakes late and disoriented on Saturday to a string of  _Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I kept you up for ages, I was a mess, I’m so sorry_. He replies with a maybe-too-harsh  _SHUT UP IT’S FINE_  and then everything slips back to normality. During the day, their conversations skid along the surface, little anecdotes and complaints and stupid jokes and band recommendations. At midnight, Phil’s come to expect _please tell me a story distract me I’m scared_  or  _why are we here anyway, isn’t it all pointless?_ , and he’ll tell James stories, little serial stories where fluffy lion cubs go on adventures that are curiously similar to the plots of Phil’s favorite books and movies, and they’ll talk about the meaning of life, and once James has things better situated in his head, they’ll talk about song lyrics, and the internet, and on the weekends they work out which movies they both own so they can start them at the same time and text each other the entire way through so it feels like they’re watching them together, and after a few weeks, it’s completely natural for Phil to consider someone he’s never met his best friend.

 

It’s a random Wednesday, and it’s late, and there’s a raging thunderstorm outside, and Phil is curled up in his duvet and texting James, because they’re practically inseparable. They’d been having a conversation about not much in particular, and then Phil had accidentally said some innuendo, and it had set off a war of  _your mum, no your mum, no yours_ , and Phil’s laughing breathlessly, tears dripping down his face, because it’s James, and everything’s funny. He hears the little noise telling him that another message has appeared, and he stifles his laughter and wipes the tears from his eyes to read it.

**23:11** _I wish I could see you right now._

He blinks in confusion, his laughter dying a little.

**23:11** _Why?_

**23:12** _Because I know you’re laughing and in my head you look really fucking cute and I know you’re cuter in real life than in my head._

Phil doesn’t reply. He feels like a fox, caught on a dark back road, staring in horror at the headlamps of an oncoming bus. He’s not even sure why he’s so scared, except that it’s too much to think about and maybe too soon to think about it. He’s frozen for a second, and then he fumbles for the power button and presses it hard and the phone goes black and he shoves it under his pillow and scrambles down the stairs and tries to distract himself and it doesn’t work.

When he comes back upstairs later and turns the phone on with a leaden mix of guilt and fear mixing in his stomach, there’s four messages.

**23:15** _I’m really sorry was that way out of line?_

**23:18** _I really regret sending that I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable please come back._

**23:23** _If you don’t want to talk to me anymore, that’s okay, just at least tell me so please?_

**23:37** _Michael? Please?_

Phil’s phone is trembling in his fingers. He wants to answer, he really does, he wants to tell James that he doesn’t actually hate him, he wants to tell him that he’s scared, that they can’t flirt over text because eventually they might meet in real life and they can’t flirt in real life because they just can’t. He wants to get a message back, James telling him that he’s being stupid, and he wants to believe James when he says it, and he wants to go back to what they had before but also he doesn’t, and he wants James to mean what he said, but he also wants James to be joking and mostly he’s just scared so he puts the phone down and buries his face in his pillow and tries to sleep even though it’s impossible. At three in the morning he reaches over and scrabbles for his phone and types with shivering fingers.

**03:07** _Hi James I’m sorry you weren’t out of line or anything I was just being stupid_

There’s an immediate answer, as if James has been waiting.

**03:07** _Why aren’t you asleep?_

**03:08** _Can’t. why aren’t you?_

**03:08** _Same._

**03:08** _I’m scared_

**03:08** _So am I._

**03:09** _Good night_

**03:09** _night_

 

The boys’ toilet in the music hallway is cold. Phil’s sitting on the floor, and he’s staring at the door of the last cubicle, because someone has scribbled out the number that changed his life. They’ve gone over it again and again in black Sharpie, until there’s no hope of someone reading it. He takes out his phone.

**12:41** _Someone erased your number._

**12:42** _Yeah. It was me._

**12:42** _Why?_

**12:42** _Because I didn’t want anyone else finding it._

**12:43** _Why’d you put it up there in the first place?_

There’s a longish pause, and Phil decides to elaborate.

_You know, I only texted it because I wanted to know why someone would write their name on the wall like that. so why’d you do it?_

**12:47** _I’ll tell you, but I want to know why you’re in there looking at the number when I’m guessing you’re meant to be out here with everyone else. that toilet is nowhere near like anywhere else in this school._

Phil stares at his phone. There are two things they’ve never touched on, and they’re why James wrote the number and why Phil contacted it. Phil’s just given James the answer to the second, and in a few moments Phil could have the answer to the first, but it would mean opening up his whole world to someone whose identity he still doesn’t know. James is his best friend. He doesn’t want to lie to him. But he doesn’t want to answer the question, either. He runs his hand through his hair, and reluctantly starts typing.

**12:48** _If I asked you to walk out here and meet me, would you do it? And would you be okay with it?_

**12:49** _Yes. To both. I mean. It’d be weird. I kind of don’t want to know who you are. But at the same time I want to._

**12:49** _Agreed. um, please come here because I want to meet you? agh. you won’t be james anymore. that’s not your real name. aghhh this is weird._

**12:50** _So weird. I’m coming._

Phil locks his phone and sets it beside him. He’s almost regretting it. This is going to be weird and their relationship is going to be different and he doesn’t want to meet James but also he does. What if he knows him already? What if they hate each other’s corporeal forms? He almost texts him to tell him no, stop, but he doesn’t, and then he just sits and waits and wonders how long it’s going to take James to get here.

It’s a few minutes before he hears footsteps, and they’re reluctant and nervous and they pause outside the door and he knows it has to be James, and he stands up, his heart fluttering rapidly in his chest like it’s grown hummingbird wings.

The door opens, slow and cautious, and a person steps inside. Phil is at once relieved and disappointed, because it’s clearly someone unrelated. Dan Howell is far too different from James to be him, and then some. He’s just a heartbreaker in a leather jacket, a smirk dripping off his thin lips, radiating confidence and cool, drinking and smoking and kissing girls just because he can. His uniform is messy, his fringe is neat, his posture is immaculate. Dan Howell has all the answers, where James has none. They’re not the same person.

“Hi?” Dan asks, looking at Phil, who supposes it’s a little weird to be standing awkwardly at the back of the room, watching the door. He tries a little smile, being polite, and considers if he should hurry out of the room, but Dan’s blocking the exit. Phil looks down, fiddling with the cuffs of his jumper, pulling them over his hands, wondering when James is going to come, if they’re going to meet for the first time with Dan Howell in the room. Or maybe James isn’t coming at all. Maybe he sent Dan to humiliate Phil in some way. He watches the floor and waits.

“I’m Dan?” comes from across the room. “Are you – ?”

Okay, so Dan doesn’t even know who he is. They’ve had French together for almost two years, and Phil doesn’t talk much, but two years is a long time. “I’m Phil Lester,” he says, meeting his eyes for a brief instant and giving him another polite smile. To his credit, Dan looks confused and a little embarrassed.

“Yeah, I know, sorry. I mean, you’re in my French class. Sorry, I thought – ”

There’s a thick silence. Phil is glad that awkward pauses don’t throw him off, force him to fill the void. He considers the situation, but he hasn’t come to a conclusion before Dan’s stuttering out more words. Phil is almost amused, except that the situation is too weird and he wants Dan to leave so he can meet James. There was a time that he would have paid good money to hear Dan Howell stutter.

“Sorry – um – yeah, just, y’know, washing my hands.” He does so, quickly and awkwardly, while Phil stares at the wall, and then Dan’s gone, the door swinging shut.

Half a minute later, Phil’s pocket is buzzing.

**12:56** _Are you sure you’re in the toilet in the music hallway?_

Phil considers lying, but he doesn’t.

**12:56** _Yeah._

Dan Howell comes in again, and he’s staring Phil down with piercing brown eyes. “All right, this is weird, but my middle name’s James.”

Phil stares at him, trying to take him in, trying to make sense of it, but it has to be true, so he blows his fringe out of his eyes in an exasperated puff of air. “Okay, mine’s Michael. Hi. I didn’t think it was you. Sorry.”

“S’okay. Didn’t think it was you either. Um, hey. I’m Dan Howell.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Yeah, I guess I know you knew that.”

They stare at each other. To his surprise, it’s Phil who breaks the silence. “Sorry. Um. I don’t know what to say and this is probably going to be weird.”

Dan nods, looking at him, and then he starts laughing, leaning against the sinks. They’re still something like ten feet away from each other, Phil pressed against the back wall, Dan by the door. “Sorry,” he says, trying to stifle his laughter in his hands. “Sorry, it’s just – like, Phil Lester the quiet one in the back of the French class, like, no offense, but I’ve never talked to you, I never thought – like, I told you  _everything_ , and sorry, it’s just surreal.”

Phil starts giggling too, and he’s not quite sure why it’s funny but it kind of is. “No, I know what you mean. You’re  _Dan Howell_. You’re, like,  _famous_. I never thought I’d even  _talk_  to you.” He pauses, smile fading. “I – I never thought I’d  _want_  to talk to you.”

Dan’s staring at him in a kind of nonaggressive, fond sort of way, and his eyes are warm and dark and not at all the steely glare that Phil’s come to expect from them. It changes his entire face, and it’s weird, and Phil doesn’t like it. It’s like a tiger, waltzing into his grandmother’s house and claiming to be a house cat. They’ve both stopped laughing now.

Dan takes a breath. “I’m sorry I’m an arrogant bastard in real life. I – you’d certainly rather be friends with James than me. I’m sorry that James turned out to be me, I guess.”

Phil looks down at the tiles, pulling at his sleeves, because Dan’s right, and he’d much rather be friends with James than Dan Howell. He doesn’t even like Dan Howell. He  _hates_  Dan Howell. “I – yeah. If I’m honest, I don’t like you that much. But the thing is, I like James a lot. And you’re the same person that he is. So. I guess I want to, like, can you explain?” He looks up from the floor, and Dan’s watching him nervously, chewing on his lip. The aura of confidence that usually surrounds him is completely gone.

“Like, what kind of explanation?”

Phil thinks. “Do you really smoke?”

Dan bursts into uncontrollable laughter again, the tension seeping out of his posture, and it’s so contagious that Phil can’t help but laugh a little, even though he isn’t sure what’s funny. “What?” he asks, watching Dan laugh, and he’s never noticed how adorable Dan Howell’s laugh is, it’s all high-pitched and uncontrollable and his voice cracks when he tries to talk again.

“Phil – what? – that’s the question you want to ask?”

“Yeah,” he says defensively, “I mean, there are loads of rumors about you, and – I don’t know, it popped into my head, sorry,”

“Well, I don’t, actually. Or do drugs. Or sleep with hundreds of girls. I’m not actually that interesting.” He’s blushing furiously. “I’m just good at doing what people think I should and pretending I’m cooler than I am.”

Phil thinks about it for a long second. He wants to know Dan Howell’s full list of motives eventually, but that’s a good start for right now. “Why’d you – ”

“You ask even more questions in real life than over text.” he says, and his voice is whiny but he’s smiling a little through the scarlet blush. “Can I come over there? I wanna, like, poke your face, but you’re all pressed up against the wall like a scared animal.”

“Yeah, you can come over here.”

They sit together against the back wall, close enough that their shoulders brush, and Dan smells like spicy cologne and he keeps fiddling with the studs in his ears.

“So why’d you do it?” Phil asks quietly. He’s looking at the scribbled-out number on the door of the last cubicle, and he’s pretty sure that Dan’s following his gaze.

“Write my number?” Dan asks, equally quietly.

“Yeah.”

“I was lonely.”

Phil rolls his head to the side to look at him. It’s not a Dan Howell thing, because Dan Howell has lots of friends, but it’s something James would do in a heartbeat, and the two sides of the coin are reconciling themselves to each other in Phil’s head faster than Phil can keep up. Every insecure thing that James said, every complaint that he made, every like or dislike or fear that he had, they all line up to something that he can imagine Dan saying now.

Dan turns, and they’re facing each other and their faces are far too close together and it’s hard to maintain eye contact. Dan speaks first. “Did you really only text the number out of, like, scientific curiosity? Why someone would write it down?”

“Probably not.” Phil says, laughing a little under his breath. “I was probably really lonely too.”

“Good.” says Dan. “Let’s be lonely together.”

“Agreed.”

There’s a pause, but it’s a nice pause, and oddly comfortable. Dan looks away, staring at the ceiling, his signature smirk pulling at his lips. Phil looks up at the ceiling too. It’s familiar to him, each crack in the plaster and damp patch recognizable. To Dan, it’s probably entirely new.

“I was right, you know.” Dan says, a smugness seeping into his tone.

“About?” Phil asks without looking away from the ceiling.

“Much cuter in real life than in my head.”

Phil is positive he’s going a bright shade of fuchsia, but he hums questioningly. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Possibly.”

“Good.”


End file.
